If there’s anything to learn from this recession is that nothing is permanent. Way before our economy tanked to where it is now, corporations adopted the layoff as a quick road to profits during the Clinton years. Downsizing, reducing redundancies, etc – it became the popular way for companies to slim down their expensive American workforce and seek cheaper labor abroad. Even when times appeared to be prosperous, such as the late Clinton years or the middle Bush years, the stable job was not as easily obtainable as it once was.

After WWII and up to the early 1990′s, a whole generation raised their children under a paternalistic employment system. Susan Faludi in Stiffed observes a whole generation of men who found that the defense contractors they spent their lives working for had no loyalty to them, especially after they were restructured at the “end” of the Cold War. G.J. Meyers‘s Executive Blues chronicles his desperate job search in the late 1980′s after getting the axe from his executive position with McDonnell-Douglas. Both authors observe that this paternalistic employment system had an air of permanence, but Faludi’s interviewees and Meyers have first-hand knowledge that their jobs weren’t so permanent and that these companies had no loyalty towards them.

For Gen X’ers like me, the instability of jobs was a reality in our young adult lives. Douglas Coupland, best known for Generation X, coined the term McJobs for the not-so-sexy jobs young people coming of age in the late 1980′s would take on to survive, albeit with no personal investment. I wound up spending over a decade in a McJob, working in a grocery store. I hated it, felt grimy every night I worked there, and felt the need to wash the dirt and the bad customers off me when I got home from work. I told myself it wasn’t my career, that my real job as a teacher or something else would be within reach once I got my diploma. That said, the grocery store kept me employed during the fiscal crises of the late 1980′s/early 1990′s and it gave me a means to pay for my college education. Being averse to risk, I didn’t quit my job in the supermarket until the end of 2000.

I wouldn’t learn about impermanence until a little before I left the job. In my late 20′s, being disillusioned with the Christian fundamentalism of my late teens/early twenties, I read up on Buddhism and even came across this concept. Yes, I knew nothing lasts forever and I understood the doctrine. I understood I was feeling dukkha, a sense of dissatisfaction, but wasn’t every one of my co-workers. Then some unknown grocery chain from the midwest bought up the supermarket chain my store was with and then came changes, all at once and everyday. Of course, many of my co-workers quit, including me. I looked to the future of finishing my degree and getting into graduate school.

And I had no idea of the impermanence to come.

It’s been a week of not being on the blog and a week after my April Fool’s joke. No, Walmart did not buy my website. A big huge sell-out like that, however, would have been nice. I am clearly in the wrong line of work if I keep having financial bail-out fantasies, especially those that enable me to quit my job(s).

ShindoTV’s had a nice little hiatus. Time to get back. The midterm’s over and it’s back to life as normal for the rest of the semester. More posts to come. No, I’m not going to do Twitter recaps for blog posts. I know it makes someone feel like they’re blogging, but it’s the type of stuff that offends me as a reader.

Before getting back to normal, here’s an item that we should all find amusing. Does the GOP even know teabagging is?

This video makes me want to hide in shame as an American. I haven’t traveled that much, but come on! The news is now on the frakking web and most of it free! Also, how many of these people have paid attention in school? Most can’t point out countries on a map. Oh, and it gets better. Some can’t tell how many sides there are to a triangle. The reporter didn’t ask them something difficult, such as what is an isosceles or a hypoteneuse.

The attempts to tell the reporter who Tony Blair is—priceless!

A really fun one – they should try to identify the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I’d let them think it’s Harriet Jones.

I were the reporter, I’d ask them what cynical means. After all, I knew one person who didn’t know the meaning and he couldn’t be bothered to use the dictionary!

Gotta love public access TV and the people who broadcast on them. YouTube’s more or less supplanted that, but somewhere, there’s someone out there who’s captured some of the most whacked out moments on tape and then share it with the rest of us. Tamika shared this vid on Facebook, but it’s been around for a while.

Alexyss K. Tylor pontificates on the penis, which seems to start out ok, but quickly becomes an incoherent rant where she more or less repeats the same thing (she seems to have an obsession about rectums). Mainstream relationship experts like to trot out their credentials if available, but she has no degree. However, Tylor has “masters degree in being played by men, used by men, told everything I want to hear…”

Needless to say, not safe for work at all. This clip is a trainwreck for sure, one where you can’t stop laughing either. Funny thing is that Tylor’s guest/cohost/? (who doesn’t get in a word edge-wise) says she’s got to “stay prayed up… keep standing in the Lord.”

Personally, I think George Takei gets off on baiting William Shatner in the media. Queen is an attention whore and playing out a lifelong feud before us all is one way all of us don’t forget who Sulu is.

Now he says he hasn’t been invited to be a guest on Shatner’s Raw Nerve, the new Biography channel interview series. Shatner says they were looking for people of “celebrity value” to get the show started. Poor Takei, passed up for Tim Allen, Judge Judy, and Jenna Jameson and a few others.

I guess the vetting process is much more stringent than the one the Senate put Hillary Clinton through for Secretary of State.

Oh, and George Takei likes to be gentled. Who knew?

President Obama gives his first weekly address, discussing his basic economic plans for education, healthcare, clean energy, and infrastructure. Part of the online and Obamafied plans include Recovery.Gov, which will soon keep all of us apprised of the plan’s progress.

Found this clip on Erasure‘s official site.